he had missed her chances, poor
thing.

Mrs. Twist forgot the young man there had been once, years before, when
Edward was still in the school room, who had almost married Edith. He
was a lusty and enterprising young man, who had come to Clark to stay
with a neighbour, and he had had nothing to do through a long vacation,
and had taken to dropping in at all hours and interrupting Edith in her
housekeeping; and Edith, even then completely flat but of a healthy
young uprightness and bright of eyes and hair, had gone silly and
forgotten how to cook, and had given her mother, who surely had enough
sorrows already, an attack of indigestion.

Mrs. Twist, however, had headed the young man off. Edith was too
necessary to her at that time. She could not possibly lose Edith. And
besides, the only way to avoid being a widow is not to marry. She told
herself that she could not bear the thought of poor Edith's running the
risk of an affliction similar to her own. If one hasn't a husband one
cannot lose him, Mrs. Twist clearly saw. If Edith married she would
certainly lose him unless he lost her. Marriage had only two solutions,
she explained to her silent daughter,--she would not, of course, discuss
with her that third one which America has so often flown to for solace
and relief,--only two, said Mrs. Twist, and they were that either one
died oneself, which wasn't exactly a happy thing, or the other one did.
It was only a question of time before one of the married was left alone
to mourn. Marriage began rosily no doubt, but it always ended black.
"And think of my having to see you like _this_" she said, with a gesture
indicating her sad dress.

Edith was intimidated; and the young man presently went away whistling.
He was the only one. Mrs. Twist had no more trouble. He passed entirely
from her mind; and as she looked at Edith dressed for going to meet
Edward in the clothes she went to church in on Sundays, she
unconsciously felt a faint contempt for a woman who had had so much time
to get married in and yet had never achieved it. She herself had been
married at twenty; and her hair even now, after all she had gone
through, was hardly more gray than Edith's.

"Your hat's crooked," she said, when Edith straightened herself after
bending down to kiss her good-bye; and then, after all unable to bear
the idea of being left alone while Edith, with that pleased face, went
off to New York to see Edward before she did, she asked her, if